Past
The Dahabi have suffered greatly in the last few decades. The century did not begin well with their underground war with the Assassins that left many of their leaders dead. Once peace was restored, the Dahabi began to come back into power and the foundation of the Al-Hazaad family promised to increase the power of the Dahabi ten fold, as the only faction with sanctioned sahir in the city outside of the Khadi themselves. The Silver Tongue, the leader of the Dahabi, had almost single handedly engineered this Dahabi renaissance. His careful, and often cruel, calculating had brought the Dahabi an immense amount of power. It looked like the greatest threat to Dahabi interests was going to be the intruding Senpet merchants.
With the Shattering of the Jewel, many things changed. The death of the Immortal Caliph was looked at favorably by the Dahabi, who were eager to bring one of their own into power as the Caliph or the Sultan. Both positions were kept away from them however. The chaos and destruction devastated many Dahabi businesses and huge warehouses filled with Dahabi merchandise or paperwork went up in flames during the fighting. Then, just as the dust was settling, two harsh blows struck the Dahabi. First, the new Caliph returned the Qabal to the city, destroying the Dahabi monopoly on sanctioned sahir. Then the Silver Tongue was assassinated by Jamilah while he was in his own home, hosting a party.
Smarting from the several blows they had suffered, the Dahabi set to work repairing their power base. The Silver Tongue’s adopted child consolidated her father’s power and Eda Ishan al-Menjari quickly made a name for herself. She brought the houses nominally together for long enough to weather the storm and create a plan to bounce back. The Dahabi had a stroke of luck however. The Assassins, long time investors in several businesses, were in the midst of a crisis themselves, and the Senpet turned their great eye from Medinaat al-Salaam to the rapidly encroaching Yodotai armies. The Dahabi quickly managed to get on their feet again and rebuild their empire.
Present
With wealth and certainty of supremacy backing the Dahabi once again, their lack of a powerful central figure began to show. House Rashid, growing rich from the dozens of building contracts going up, began to ignore the advice and orders of Eda Ishan. Many of the other houses quickly followed their example and turned to dealing with their own affairs. Eda Ishan’s dream of reuniting the Dahabi houses as one single powerful unit as it had been before the Awakening was shattered.
As the Senpet-Yodotai War raged, the fortunes of several houses shifted. House Asmari, dependent upon foreign trade, suffered as goods were no longer flowing from the Senpet and Yodotai caravans were regularly raided by Senpet guerrillas. House Haffit’s own sales dropped as well, as the Senpet who had come for access to the mighty river left once again. House Hazaad slowly began to see their profits and power grow again as they used Tomb Raiders to collect precious lost magical artifacts and tomes.
The end of the Senpet-Yodotai War brought a tentative alliance between House Rashid, House Menjari, House Basiri, and House Asmari into being. The Yodotai started bringing more goods into the city that had never been seen before, and their contract for demolishing the old Senpet garrison house and building their own massive structure was granted to House Rashid by the efforts of House Menjari and House Asmari. The recent massive expansion of the city has also been in no small part bankrolled, lobbied for, and built by, this alliance of houses.
On the other side, House Enour and House Hazaad formed an alliance of their own to assist one another that the other houses for the most part ignore. Enour and Hazaad were both the weakest and least liked of the Great Houses and few think they are worth any concern or note. Rumor was that they were courting many of the unaligned houses to join them. If House Haffit or House Mendadi joined their power to House Hazaad, it would have quickly become an alliance worth noting.
With the shattering of the Menjari/Basiri alliance and the formation of three competing powers over control of the Dahabi Houses, matters quickly ratcheted up the conflict beyond a commercial dispute and blood spilled onto the streets on more than one occasion. The Dahabi Civil War ended as a bloody affair which cost the lives of much of the Dahabi upper echelons of power and nearly outed the Qolat conspiracy that lay behind the scenes. But the matter was solved and the Red Mistress Eda Ishan will be sure to treat any she regards as contestants to her power over the Dahabi in a similar manner.
Future
The Dahabi have a great deal of work ahead of them. The war gutted much of the command structure on all three sides of the fighting and has left several of the Great Houses effectively headless until proper replacements can be found. This has left the Dahabi in a reactionary state for now, unable to plan far ahead or get the jump on buying trends, costing the various Houses hundreds of Copper a month in lost revenue.
Leaders
House Asmari
House Asmari, always a rather powerful house for their connection to civilizations outside of the City. The recent fluctuations of powers outside of the city, first the fall of the Senpet, then the fall of the Ivory Kingdoms, then the rise of Yodotai and Rokugani trade, have left for rather tumultuous times. For the past seventeen years, House Asmari has been ruled by a shadowy figure known as Ikram al-Asmari. Rarely seen in public, Ikram keeps to himself and avoids most contact with the outside world, preferring to keep only to his business. Those few times he has been seen outside, he has always worn a mask and heavy clothing. Rumors abound as to either why he keeps himself hidden away or what his real identity is.
Ikram’s fortunes have not been good in recent years. His insistence of trade with the Ivory Kingdoms, even as they began to fall apart, combined with his push towards the expansion of the city has left many questioning his loyalties and his judgement. That he also seems insistent on putting the Rokugani and the Yodotai at odds whenever he can makes some other Asmari wonder if perhaps it is time for another to take his place as the head of the household.
Ikram maintains his support with his core faction of advisors, a group of six men who meet with Ikram in private most often, but some have begun to notice subtle oddities. For example that whenever he is in public with his advisors, one or two are always missing, at first it was easily explained away but after seventeen years some are beginning to whisper. That Ikram’s supposed death during the Dahabi Civil War was proven to be a hoax and one of his advisors disappeared in an unfortunate accident in the desert a few days later has others whispering and wondering if perhaps Ikram isn’t one person at all.
House Basiri
Fawzi al-Basiri is perhaps the last person one would have expected to become the head of that Dahabi House, of course that is also precisely why he was chosen. Grandson to the missing Tashim, Fawzi was born small and frail, having barely survived his infancy. He has little charm and lacks the charismatic power that his uncle had, leaving little doubt that he was placed to keep House Basiri under Eda Ishan’s control.
Fawzi has little interest in fighting it either, some say he has no fight in him at all. He is meek, caring, and generally unsuited for the cut-throat world of the the Dahabi. Still, he is not without his merits. He has a brilliant mind and a deep fascination in philosophy, he has helped to pioneer several fields of study and has been pushing to patron several scholars in their study of the biological processes. It is a losing battle however as the rest of the House fights against what they consider to be a waste of resources.
Fawzi spends most of his time now in his personal library or at the School of Astronomy, mostly attempting to shirk his duties as the head of his House. He has little time or patience for superstition and faith, being an avowed man of reason, making his dealings with other factions who take their faith very seriously strained at the best of times. Though he has only been at the job for a month, he is already despised by the majority of his House, and the stress of the job is clearly beginning to get to him. His sole benefactor in all this trouble is his sister Dua, who continues to support him in this time of crisis.
House Enour
Jinan al-Enour is a woman on a mission. The daughter of Rana, who died under mysterious circumstances during the Dahabi Civil War, Jinan had been betrothed to Nur al-Hazaad, the heir to House Hazaad. It had been meant to be a political pairing, but as it turns out fortune blessed the two with love. They began spending more and more time together, Jinan going so far as to take up the study of being a sahir to be able to spend more time with her betrothed. She could not have been happier.
Then things changed with the war. Her mother was killed, leaving Jinan with no family to call her own, and shortly after that House Menjari claimed victory in the fighting. House Enour was sent reeling, and Jinan’s betrothal to her beloved was called off by the Menjari who replaced it with a betrothal to Mazin al-Rashid. Jinan for her part was outraged, but with so many deaths and disappearances plaguing the Dahabi, she knew better than to speak against it. Still, many are taking bets on how soon she will cuckold her new husband, or perhaps how soon it will be until he has an unfortunate accident of his own.
Jinan is quite the beauty of the age, and had her fair share of suitors before her engagement was declared. Her hair is a slight shade of red, giving it a rusted look that enhances her beauty and makes her look slightly exotic. She takes great pride in her beauty, but seems hesitant to use it more directly to her advantage than some would. Still, all that may change as she finds herself more and more determined to be reunited with her love.
House Haffit
Abdullah al-Haffit has always been somewhat of an odd duck among the Dahabi Houses. A devoutly religious man he gave up his claim to House Haffit two decades ago and joined the order of monks who serve at the House of the Heavens. He served there dutifully and with great fervor, happily forgetting his time among the Dahabi, even as he prayed for them. What Eda Ishan must have blackmailed him with to bring him away from his devotions is quite the curiosity then.
Abdullah is a harsh man who believes stringently that the doom of the world in this decayed age is just around the corner, that he views other faiths as an insult to Lady Shilah does not help matters when he is forced into diplomacy. Already his bevy of advisors have tried to push most of the work out of his hands and given them to someone less likely to start a water riot. On more than one occasion Abdullah has asked his advisors why House Haffit allows for pagans to drink from the water so generously provided by Lady Shilah, or called for decreased prices in poorer quarters of the city. In response most of his House has done their best to shut him out of political matters.
Still, Abdullah is not happy. He does not want rulership of the House he was born to, and on the occasions that potential wives have been suggested to him, he has rebuffed them. Entering his forties now, without heir, some are already looking to his brother, a quiet repairman, to take his place. Abdullah, for his part, has opposed such measures to be taken, though it isn’t hard to tell that he would happily do so if Eda Ishan were out of the picture.
House Hazaad
House Hazaad has once again fallen onto hard times. With the death of two lords in as many months, the future of this house among the Great Houses of the Dahabi is once again in question. It is a question that Nur al-Hazaad, the new lord of that House will likely have to answer. He is a fairly popular man with a good head on his shoulders and a keen mind and good looks. The problem is he has no talent for magical theory. For what talents he does have, he cannot excel in the one area he is expected to excel in, and that undermines his authority a great deal.
That he has been torn from his love is another dagger in Nur’s heart. But it has only encouraged him more to seek out power enough to break his current engagement to Zahrah al-Asmari. Such a move is dangerous though, as tensions among the Dahabi houses remain elevated and House Asmari would certainly take offense at such an insult. That the Houses are now so firmly under the thumb of House Menjari makes such a task even more difficult as Eda Ishan may solve the problem by simply making Nur disappear and replace him as she did his predecessor. If that were to happen, Nasheem al-Hazaad, or more appropriately his mother Idira al-Hazaad, would become the head of the House.
Nur has an appreciation for life that perhaps some of his fellow Dahabi lack. He takes meticulous care of his body and is careful to keep in shape unlike so many other merchants. If he can overcome the challenges that have been set before him, he may take his House far. If not however, they may well be doomed to the annals of history.
House Mendadi
At first glance, it would seem that not much has changed for House Mendadi in relation to it’s leader. Since Nima’s death House Mendadi has been taken control of by his daughter, Malaika. She is like her father in many ways, a consummate swordsman, brash, and not so good of a diplomat. She lacks her father’s sense of a fight though, his ability to feel out how a fight would go before it even happened. She settles her disputes with Tahaddi regularly and in recent months has been going about issuing challenges on a regular basis as she looks for the last few people who set her father up to die.
Her crusade often leaves her husband, Usman, to mind the matters of running the House, something he is quite capable of doing. Considering the fate of the other new heads of the houses, Malaika considers that she had her husband chosen by her father to be quite a coup compared to the others. It is a loveless marriage, but they suit each other well, even if there have been no children yet. Malaika’s love of fighting makes it unlikely that there will be many children from the marriage.
Despite her poor relations with her own faction and family, Malaika has worked to better relations with both the Yodotai and the Rokugani, two cultures that she holds in high regard, and she spends a great deal of time at Hayreddin’s School. Malaika clearly wants to prove that she’s the best, and she will do whatever she needs to in order to see that happen.
House Menjari
House Menjari has cemented its role as the head of the Dahabi Merchant families. Eda Ishan has come out on top by virtue of being the last contender standing. Her victory was not pretty, but she did not need it to be. It was a victory that would have done her adopted father proud. Easily the richest of the Major Houses, House Menjari is still recovering from several deep loans that were given out, but have begun to be paid back slowly now, several frozen assets that they managed to collect on during the course of the fighting has also increased their sums.
Eda Ishan is growing tired now, she has overseen the bloody fighting that needed to take place for her to come to true prominence. She has done what she can to keep a second rival from springing up, but still, for all that, she is old now. She lacks the stamina she once had and quietly, secretly, she wonders by how much she will outlive her opponents. Now she seeks for an heir for herself, looking to adopt even as she fully comes to realize how much she has become like the father that she hated so much as a child.
Eda Ishan is looking to her legacy now, as the head of the Qolat she has seen their position within the city improved, partly through luck, partly through skill. Likewise the Dahabi have been brought back from the brink of destruction. She recognizes that she may be remembered as cruel, as the Silver Tongue had been, but she does not care. The ends always justify the means in her eyes.
House Rashid
House Rashid is ruled by the controlling and far reaching Jibral. Changing tactics from his cousin, who had antagonized Eda Ishan, Jibral fell in line with her ideas and used them to advance the cause of House Rashid in some rather brilliant maneuvering that left House Rashid with as many housing contracts for the government as they could get their hands on. Though the move almost broke the House, in the end they managed to overcome the difficulty of building an entire new quarter to the city and have begun to appreciate the profits that such a venture offered them, even if the Civil War has drained those gains some.
Jibral is currently likely the second most popular man in the city for the Ivindi refugees that now call this city home. His efforts to give them a new home has many declaring him to be a true patron of their people and many will do anything to support House Rashid now. It is a situation that Jibral has been quick to take advantage of.
Jibral also found the Civil War difficult to deal with, not a violent man by nature, and detesting the use of violence, he often had to excuse himself from the making of decisions during the worst of the fighting. This led to a mixed reaction from many, some viewing him as weak for not being able to stomach the difficult decisions, some lauding him for his distaste for violence.
History
PastThe Dahabi have suffered greatly in the last few decades. The century did not begin well with their underground war with the Assassins that left many of their leaders dead. Once peace was restored, the Dahabi began to come back into power and the foundation of the Al-Hazaad family promised to increase the power of the Dahabi ten fold, as the only faction with sanctioned sahir in the city outside of the Khadi themselves. The Silver Tongue, the leader of the Dahabi, had almost single handedly engineered this Dahabi renaissance. His careful, and often cruel, calculating had brought the Dahabi an immense amount of power. It looked like the greatest threat to Dahabi interests was going to be the intruding Senpet merchants.
With the Shattering of the Jewel, many things changed. The death of the Immortal Caliph was looked at favorably by the Dahabi, who were eager to bring one of their own into power as the Caliph or the Sultan. Both positions were kept away from them however. The chaos and destruction devastated many Dahabi businesses and huge warehouses filled with Dahabi merchandise or paperwork went up in flames during the fighting. Then, just as the dust was settling, two harsh blows struck the Dahabi. First, the new Caliph returned the Qabal to the city, destroying the Dahabi monopoly on sanctioned sahir. Then the Silver Tongue was assassinated by Jamilah while he was in his own home, hosting a party.
Smarting from the several blows they had suffered, the Dahabi set to work repairing their power base. The Silver Tongue’s adopted child consolidated her father’s power and Eda Ishan al-Menjari quickly made a name for herself. She brought the houses nominally together for long enough to weather the storm and create a plan to bounce back. The Dahabi had a stroke of luck however. The Assassins, long time investors in several businesses, were in the midst of a crisis themselves, and the Senpet turned their great eye from Medinaat al-Salaam to the rapidly encroaching Yodotai armies. The Dahabi quickly managed to get on their feet again and rebuild their empire.
Present
With wealth and certainty of supremacy backing the Dahabi once again, their lack of a powerful central figure began to show. House Rashid, growing rich from the dozens of building contracts going up, began to ignore the advice and orders of Eda Ishan. Many of the other houses quickly followed their example and turned to dealing with their own affairs. Eda Ishan’s dream of reuniting the Dahabi houses as one single powerful unit as it had been before the Awakening was shattered.
As the Senpet-Yodotai War raged, the fortunes of several houses shifted. House Asmari, dependent upon foreign trade, suffered as goods were no longer flowing from the Senpet and Yodotai caravans were regularly raided by Senpet guerrillas. House Haffit’s own sales dropped as well, as the Senpet who had come for access to the mighty river left once again. House Hazaad slowly began to see their profits and power grow again as they used Tomb Raiders to collect precious lost magical artifacts and tomes.
The end of the Senpet-Yodotai War brought a tentative alliance between House Rashid, House Menjari, House Basiri, and House Asmari into being. The Yodotai started bringing more goods into the city that had never been seen before, and their contract for demolishing the old Senpet garrison house and building their own massive structure was granted to House Rashid by the efforts of House Menjari and House Asmari. The recent massive expansion of the city has also been in no small part bankrolled, lobbied for, and built by, this alliance of houses.
On the other side, House Enour and House Hazaad formed an alliance of their own to assist one another that the other houses for the most part ignore. Enour and Hazaad were both the weakest and least liked of the Great Houses and few think they are worth any concern or note. Rumor was that they were courting many of the unaligned houses to join them. If House Haffit or House Mendadi joined their power to House Hazaad, it would have quickly become an alliance worth noting.
With the shattering of the Menjari/Basiri alliance and the formation of three competing powers over control of the Dahabi Houses, matters quickly ratcheted up the conflict beyond a commercial dispute and blood spilled onto the streets on more than one occasion. The Dahabi Civil War ended as a bloody affair which cost the lives of much of the Dahabi upper echelons of power and nearly outed the Qolat conspiracy that lay behind the scenes. But the matter was solved and the Red Mistress Eda Ishan will be sure to treat any she regards as contestants to her power over the Dahabi in a similar manner.
Future
The Dahabi have a great deal of work ahead of them. The war gutted much of the command structure on all three sides of the fighting and has left several of the Great Houses effectively headless until proper replacements can be found. This has left the Dahabi in a reactionary state for now, unable to plan far ahead or get the jump on buying trends, costing the various Houses hundreds of Copper a month in lost revenue.
Leaders
House AsmariHouse Asmari, always a rather powerful house for their connection to civilizations outside of the City. The recent fluctuations of powers outside of the city, first the fall of the Senpet, then the fall of the Ivory Kingdoms, then the rise of Yodotai and Rokugani trade, have left for rather tumultuous times. For the past seventeen years, House Asmari has been ruled by a shadowy figure known as Ikram al-Asmari. Rarely seen in public, Ikram keeps to himself and avoids most contact with the outside world, preferring to keep only to his business. Those few times he has been seen outside, he has always worn a mask and heavy clothing. Rumors abound as to either why he keeps himself hidden away or what his real identity is.
Ikram’s fortunes have not been good in recent years. His insistence of trade with the Ivory Kingdoms, even as they began to fall apart, combined with his push towards the expansion of the city has left many questioning his loyalties and his judgement. That he also seems insistent on putting the Rokugani and the Yodotai at odds whenever he can makes some other Asmari wonder if perhaps it is time for another to take his place as the head of the household.
Ikram maintains his support with his core faction of advisors, a group of six men who meet with Ikram in private most often, but some have begun to notice subtle oddities. For example that whenever he is in public with his advisors, one or two are always missing, at first it was easily explained away but after seventeen years some are beginning to whisper. That Ikram’s supposed death during the Dahabi Civil War was proven to be a hoax and one of his advisors disappeared in an unfortunate accident in the desert a few days later has others whispering and wondering if perhaps Ikram isn’t one person at all.
House Basiri
Fawzi al-Basiri is perhaps the last person one would have expected to become the head of that Dahabi House, of course that is also precisely why he was chosen. Grandson to the missing Tashim, Fawzi was born small and frail, having barely survived his infancy. He has little charm and lacks the charismatic power that his uncle had, leaving little doubt that he was placed to keep House Basiri under Eda Ishan’s control.
Fawzi has little interest in fighting it either, some say he has no fight in him at all. He is meek, caring, and generally unsuited for the cut-throat world of the the Dahabi. Still, he is not without his merits. He has a brilliant mind and a deep fascination in philosophy, he has helped to pioneer several fields of study and has been pushing to patron several scholars in their study of the biological processes. It is a losing battle however as the rest of the House fights against what they consider to be a waste of resources.
Fawzi spends most of his time now in his personal library or at the School of Astronomy, mostly attempting to shirk his duties as the head of his House. He has little time or patience for superstition and faith, being an avowed man of reason, making his dealings with other factions who take their faith very seriously strained at the best of times. Though he has only been at the job for a month, he is already despised by the majority of his House, and the stress of the job is clearly beginning to get to him. His sole benefactor in all this trouble is his sister Dua, who continues to support him in this time of crisis.
House Enour
Jinan al-Enour is a woman on a mission. The daughter of Rana, who died under mysterious circumstances during the Dahabi Civil War, Jinan had been betrothed to Nur al-Hazaad, the heir to House Hazaad. It had been meant to be a political pairing, but as it turns out fortune blessed the two with love. They began spending more and more time together, Jinan going so far as to take up the study of being a sahir to be able to spend more time with her betrothed. She could not have been happier.
Then things changed with the war. Her mother was killed, leaving Jinan with no family to call her own, and shortly after that House Menjari claimed victory in the fighting. House Enour was sent reeling, and Jinan’s betrothal to her beloved was called off by the Menjari who replaced it with a betrothal to Mazin al-Rashid. Jinan for her part was outraged, but with so many deaths and disappearances plaguing the Dahabi, she knew better than to speak against it. Still, many are taking bets on how soon she will cuckold her new husband, or perhaps how soon it will be until he has an unfortunate accident of his own.
Jinan is quite the beauty of the age, and had her fair share of suitors before her engagement was declared. Her hair is a slight shade of red, giving it a rusted look that enhances her beauty and makes her look slightly exotic. She takes great pride in her beauty, but seems hesitant to use it more directly to her advantage than some would. Still, all that may change as she finds herself more and more determined to be reunited with her love.
House Haffit
Abdullah al-Haffit has always been somewhat of an odd duck among the Dahabi Houses. A devoutly religious man he gave up his claim to House Haffit two decades ago and joined the order of monks who serve at the House of the Heavens. He served there dutifully and with great fervor, happily forgetting his time among the Dahabi, even as he prayed for them. What Eda Ishan must have blackmailed him with to bring him away from his devotions is quite the curiosity then.
Abdullah is a harsh man who believes stringently that the doom of the world in this decayed age is just around the corner, that he views other faiths as an insult to Lady Shilah does not help matters when he is forced into diplomacy. Already his bevy of advisors have tried to push most of the work out of his hands and given them to someone less likely to start a water riot. On more than one occasion Abdullah has asked his advisors why House Haffit allows for pagans to drink from the water so generously provided by Lady Shilah, or called for decreased prices in poorer quarters of the city. In response most of his House has done their best to shut him out of political matters.
Still, Abdullah is not happy. He does not want rulership of the House he was born to, and on the occasions that potential wives have been suggested to him, he has rebuffed them. Entering his forties now, without heir, some are already looking to his brother, a quiet repairman, to take his place. Abdullah, for his part, has opposed such measures to be taken, though it isn’t hard to tell that he would happily do so if Eda Ishan were out of the picture.
House Hazaad
House Hazaad has once again fallen onto hard times. With the death of two lords in as many months, the future of this house among the Great Houses of the Dahabi is once again in question. It is a question that Nur al-Hazaad, the new lord of that House will likely have to answer. He is a fairly popular man with a good head on his shoulders and a keen mind and good looks. The problem is he has no talent for magical theory. For what talents he does have, he cannot excel in the one area he is expected to excel in, and that undermines his authority a great deal.
That he has been torn from his love is another dagger in Nur’s heart. But it has only encouraged him more to seek out power enough to break his current engagement to Zahrah al-Asmari. Such a move is dangerous though, as tensions among the Dahabi houses remain elevated and House Asmari would certainly take offense at such an insult. That the Houses are now so firmly under the thumb of House Menjari makes such a task even more difficult as Eda Ishan may solve the problem by simply making Nur disappear and replace him as she did his predecessor. If that were to happen, Nasheem al-Hazaad, or more appropriately his mother Idira al-Hazaad, would become the head of the House.
Nur has an appreciation for life that perhaps some of his fellow Dahabi lack. He takes meticulous care of his body and is careful to keep in shape unlike so many other merchants. If he can overcome the challenges that have been set before him, he may take his House far. If not however, they may well be doomed to the annals of history.
House Mendadi
At first glance, it would seem that not much has changed for House Mendadi in relation to it’s leader. Since Nima’s death House Mendadi has been taken control of by his daughter, Malaika. She is like her father in many ways, a consummate swordsman, brash, and not so good of a diplomat. She lacks her father’s sense of a fight though, his ability to feel out how a fight would go before it even happened. She settles her disputes with Tahaddi regularly and in recent months has been going about issuing challenges on a regular basis as she looks for the last few people who set her father up to die.
Her crusade often leaves her husband, Usman, to mind the matters of running the House, something he is quite capable of doing. Considering the fate of the other new heads of the houses, Malaika considers that she had her husband chosen by her father to be quite a coup compared to the others. It is a loveless marriage, but they suit each other well, even if there have been no children yet. Malaika’s love of fighting makes it unlikely that there will be many children from the marriage.
Despite her poor relations with her own faction and family, Malaika has worked to better relations with both the Yodotai and the Rokugani, two cultures that she holds in high regard, and she spends a great deal of time at Hayreddin’s School. Malaika clearly wants to prove that she’s the best, and she will do whatever she needs to in order to see that happen.
House Menjari
House Menjari has cemented its role as the head of the Dahabi Merchant families. Eda Ishan has come out on top by virtue of being the last contender standing. Her victory was not pretty, but she did not need it to be. It was a victory that would have done her adopted father proud. Easily the richest of the Major Houses, House Menjari is still recovering from several deep loans that were given out, but have begun to be paid back slowly now, several frozen assets that they managed to collect on during the course of the fighting has also increased their sums.
Eda Ishan is growing tired now, she has overseen the bloody fighting that needed to take place for her to come to true prominence. She has done what she can to keep a second rival from springing up, but still, for all that, she is old now. She lacks the stamina she once had and quietly, secretly, she wonders by how much she will outlive her opponents. Now she seeks for an heir for herself, looking to adopt even as she fully comes to realize how much she has become like the father that she hated so much as a child.
Eda Ishan is looking to her legacy now, as the head of the Qolat she has seen their position within the city improved, partly through luck, partly through skill. Likewise the Dahabi have been brought back from the brink of destruction. She recognizes that she may be remembered as cruel, as the Silver Tongue had been, but she does not care. The ends always justify the means in her eyes.
House Rashid
House Rashid is ruled by the controlling and far reaching Jibral. Changing tactics from his cousin, who had antagonized Eda Ishan, Jibral fell in line with her ideas and used them to advance the cause of House Rashid in some rather brilliant maneuvering that left House Rashid with as many housing contracts for the government as they could get their hands on. Though the move almost broke the House, in the end they managed to overcome the difficulty of building an entire new quarter to the city and have begun to appreciate the profits that such a venture offered them, even if the Civil War has drained those gains some.
Jibral is currently likely the second most popular man in the city for the Ivindi refugees that now call this city home. His efforts to give them a new home has many declaring him to be a true patron of their people and many will do anything to support House Rashid now. It is a situation that Jibral has been quick to take advantage of.
Jibral also found the Civil War difficult to deal with, not a violent man by nature, and detesting the use of violence, he often had to excuse himself from the making of decisions during the worst of the fighting. This led to a mixed reaction from many, some viewing him as weak for not being able to stomach the difficult decisions, some lauding him for his distaste for violence.